BEING PRESENT WITH HEARING LOSS

Isolation is the dark angel of hearing loss. Yet there are times when I welcome her as the lesser of two evils. Silence versus noise. Pease versus the struggle for understanding. But it goes deeper than that. I've only been treating my hearing loss since 1997. I have, for as long as I can remember, always felt on the fringes of group conversations. There is, of course, no way to check this out but I might have always had a hearing disconnect of some kind. And this could have been more behavioral or developmental than organic. The part that I remember is the feeling that I was being "talked over" as though I were between two people who knew what the subject was and I didn't. My contributions often seemed to be irrelevant or at best, slightly off point. It may not mean a thing but my favorite place as a child was in the crown of an oak tree or in my secret loft. Liking to be alone may be the innocent truth of it, but there it is for consideration. Perhaps I am looking for things that are not there.

When real time profound deafness was added to this history there were the makings of some serious, perhaps unconscious ground-in expectations when experiencing group discussions. I have found that confirming a statement is often the solution as in - "Are you saying the price was wrong or the purchase itself?". What I heard was not definitive, but asking such a question could get to the point easily. It can make conversation kind of clunky but it also can clear up a lot of misunderstanding and keep one in the center of things. It's more to the point that just asking, "What?".

I often wonder what it was like when I could hear it all. I think I remember when I could understand conversations in the "other" room or across the room. I think I can remember the sweet passages of Beethoven's sixth. But can I be sure? It's been so long. Those are childhood memories. Memories of other times.

The thing is, hearing loss is a constant struggle. It's a major feature of one's life and there is something to learn from it every day and it's not often about the past, but about now.